Domain transfer woes

November 27, 2010 1:26 PM

How can I make a domain name transfer from a dead server?

I'm attempting to transfer a domain from another party to myself using Go Daddy or a similar service. Unfortunately, the person who has the domain currently has told me that the server that it's hosted on is "dead." The email address on file for the domain is on the same server, so domain transfer requests and other admin emails go nowhere. She's made a request (presumably to her tech support) to update that email address and is waiting on a reply.

Is there anything I can do on my end in the meantime? Or do I just have to wait until she gets her contact email address updated? Is there any advice or info I can give her to speed things along?

posted by mumblingmynah to computers & internet (3 answers total)

She has to have a valid email address in order to approve the domain transfer request, but I don't think that the email on file with her registrar has to be tied to her domain in any way. I use a gmail account for my account with several different registrars and have moved domains between them many times.

If for some reason her registrar is insisting they send the request to an email account on the domain ([e-mail] or webmaster or whatever), just tell her she can set up Google Apps for the domain pretty easily.

Unfortunately, their isn't much you can do without her initiating the transfer first.
posted by arcticbluejay at 1:40 PM on November 27, 2010

Even if her hosting service is "dead," her domain registrar should have options available to at least set up a forwarder for any email addresses associated with that domain, but yeah, you have to wait one way or the other. Either she updates the email address on the account to a good address, or her tech support helps her set up a forwarder for the "dead" email address. Who's her registrar, do you know?

And this kind of thing is exactly why you should never, ever, ever use the same domain for your contact info in your WHOIS information, ever.
posted by Gator at 1:50 PM on November 27, 2010

You can always do it with the registrar by having the owner fax over a picture of ID and whatever other easy proof of ownership they need. Also, she can log into the registrar and forward that email address to something external like Gmail and then start the transfer. The server is really irrelevant at this point since it's all handled at the registrar level.
posted by Raichle at 1:50 PM on November 27, 2010